Portugal - Indústria 4.0

Indústria 4.0 is the Portuguese strategy to develop industry in the digital area.Launched In January 2017,the aim is to put Portugal at the forefront of the 4th Industrial Revolution by focusing on 3 axes: digitalisation, innovation and training.

Concentrated on identifying the real needs of the Portuguese industry, with a particular focus on SMEs as drivers of change, 120 Portuguese companies participated in the design of the strategy. During the next 4 years, 60 public and private funded measures will be implemented. The measures are divided in 6 strategic pillars: human capital qualification; technological cooperation; start-up i4.0; financing and investment incentive; internationalisation; and standards and regulation.

Following a bottom-up approach used for its design, the implementationofIndústria4.0will be conducted through a platform launched by the Ministry of Economy but managed by COTEC - a private company.COTEC will also be in charge of updating the initiative, which will serve to adapt its content to the quick evolution of needs.

Needs-oriented and with a strong support and involvement of the private sector, in particular multinational groups, Indústria 4.0 expects to have an impact in over 50.000 companies and train over 20.000 workers.

Due to its early implementation stage, it is difficult to analyse the outcomes. The lack of mechanisms to assure private investment and leverage, as well as social apprehension over job losses are among the major challenges the initiative is currently facing.

Originally focused on 4 key sectors, the Government is currently working on following the same design approach to develop others sectors of the economy such as “media and content“ and fintech.